Suicide is often an impulse decision. Limiting access to things which can kill you in an instant will reduce the number of suicides. This has been shown in study after study and yet anti-gun control advocates continue to ignore it. You pretend that if guns magically disappeared tomorrow there would be no impact on the suicide rate, and that is simply wrong.

Means Matter

Excellent, you're posting facts now, and making an argument, instead of setting up straw men. I appreciate the facts, thanks. I definitely do use facts to change my own views.

I didn't take offense at your view, I took offense at your straw man and (semi-) mockery.

High gun ownership states have a firearm suicide rate of 9,749. Low ownership states have a firearm suicide rate of 2,606. If people would just use other methods, you would expect the non-firearm suicide rate to balance out. However the high gun ownership states have a non-firearm suicide rate of 5,060 and low gun ownership states have a rate of 5,446. So yes, it is a little higher non-firearm suicide rate, but the overall suicide rate is 46% lower when there is less access to guns.

Excellent. Good information to know. Thank you for posting it. That's a thousand times more helpful to an actual dialogue than "That's patently ridiculous, like arguing that you can still die in a car crash, therefore seat belts are pointless."

You're right that my own view is formed by my own experiences. Of the people who attempted suicide in my own family, guns weren't their first choice. And my own past thoughts of suicide (a dozen years ago, as a teenager, lasting only a few weeks), guns weren't even the top three of fantasy suicide methods (jumping off a very high building and falling was my #1; I still want to experience that, but with skydiving and a parachute, thank you very much ).

I wasn't arguing one way or another against gun-suicides (though I stated my guess, which you properly countered); I was arguing that you were making a straw-man argument and striking that down, instead of attacking his real argument.

You can call his real argument fallacious, but you can't make up a new argument and then reasonably call that one fallacious.

This is the problem I have arguing with "you people". You debate with opinions and anecdotes rather than easily accessible data.

Also, calling the person you are debating with "you people" (your own words), is deliberate self-distancing language to identify the "opposing side" as "the enemy", preventing you from fully processing what they are saying, by regulating them to a category that is sub-human. It prevents you from hearing anything they say that may have value. You self-damage your own ability to gain knowledge and to come to an understanding, by casting your discussion-opponents in a less-than-human light.

Not sub-human. Just wrong and prone to ignoring data.

So, people who disagree with you are less intelligent and ignorant, and thus less-superior.
Or, replace "people who disagree with you" with "people living in specific states" or "people believing a specific religion" or "people who voted for a specific candidate".
Or which group of people are always wrong and ignore data? The problem is automatically pidgeonholing people into groups, then labeling the groups as inferior, and then using that to dismiss the individual. That is convenient and easy, but ultimately illogical.

Bob might be wrong and prone to ignoring data. But saying Bob's group is prone to ignoring data, and Sam belongs to Bob's group, therefore Sam must ignore data...

I don't care if a braindead drug addict walks up to me and tells me something that's true. If it's true, I need to be able to accept it regardless of who it comes from. If I broadly-brush individuals into groups, and consider one group less intelligent than my own group, I poison my own ability to receive knowledge from them. Whether or not I would actually, in real life, be able to rationalize not insta-dismiss a drug addict's comment is another matter, but ideally, I should attempt to analyze statements on their own merit, not by the merits of the group the person belongs to.

They can be wrong in 99/100 areas, but if you assume they are wrong in 100/100, you prevent yourself from actually considering what they have to say.

I've been there. I was a bootstrappy libertarian who loved guns

I don't love guns. I've fired a gun once - several months ago - and I didn't particularly care. I've been invited to go hunting by a much older relative, and I accepted the invite purely for social reasons (because I'm introverted and need to make conscious efforts in social areas, and I thought a rejection of the offer wouldn't be smart relationally); I ended up not going due to a back injury anyway (moving bags of concrete for a home-improvement project I was working on - it wasn't a gun-related injury).

When I lived in a poorer area of California, I never saw a gun, but I knew there were in the neighborhood, and they were a hidden threat.
Now I live in the rural mid-west where I see guns everywhere, but the people are mature and responsible.

In different areas, guns mean different things to me. Making one set of laws apply universally needs to take into account these differences in behavior, differences in population densities.

I think the reason why most anti-gun-control individuals think gun-control is stupid, is because they look around their community, see hundreds or thousands of guns, and see virtually no crime, and virtually no murder, and assume "more guns = less crime", or at least "guns != crime". I know that view isn't accurate, but it's an understandable jump to make.

If I'm reading these charts correctly (a pretty big if ), in rural areas, gun homicides are three times lower than in densely urban areas (but it's more than made up for by more-than-double gun suicide rates)

If 9 people per 100,000 die by gun homocides in a densely-populated city of, say, 500,000, than means 45 murders are taking place every year in "My City" - i.e. on average, one murder in "my city" every eight days - which seems like a huge problem.

If ~3 people per 100,000 die by gun homicides in a loosely populated rural town of 5,000 (I can't find the averages, but in my area the rural towns are even smaller than that), then that means on average one murder is taking place "in my town" every four years, and doesn't seem like a problem.

I would approve of a set of balanced gun control laws (ofcourse "balanced" is a meaningless term. Everyone agrees with "balance", everyone has different definitions of it) and, not being a gun aficionado, am ignorant of what laws already exist on the books. I was very surprised when I was staying in Kansas for a few weeks, and someone mentioned that you don't even need a permit to buy and carry a gun in Kansas. I don't approve of that.

I definitely think if a gun is used in a crime, its serial number should immediately be tracable to who bought it, and that selling a gun to another person should require you to file paperwork with the government, in the same way you have to do so when you sell a car.

When I was younger, my mom donated a car to a homeless shelter, who in turn gave it to someone else. Apparently, they used it to used the car to drive around and expose themselves to children before driving away. The police came (politely) knocking at the door, thinking it was one of my older brothers who was exposing themselves, because the DMV's bureaucracy was so behind that even a month or so later they still hadn't updated their databases. The officer was so relieved (and verbally said so) that my mom was able to instantly prove that she had transferred ownership of the vehicle, because she kept the personal copy of records the DMV gave her.
I'd like the same kind of system for person-to-person gun transfers, and I'd like there to be not just a surface serial number, but secret hidden serial numbers deep inside the gun (a quick google shows that at least one gun manufacturer has secret deeply-embedded serial numbers). Sure, it won't stop knowledgeable criminals, but it might help catch more of the ignorant ones.

This is just one idea, it's not the only gun-control method I'd support.

and thought poor people were just lazy.

I personally don't think that; though I do think many people exploit government support, and that many others who need help don't receive it. I'd like to see bureaucracy reduced (it's easier to exploit bureaucracy if you know how to game the system, and it's also easy to be ignored by bureaucracy if you don't know how to navigate through it), and more power given to real individuals to make actual decisions, and held accountable for their decisions. This would be hard to do, and I don't know how it should be gone about, but I think throwing more money at a partially-working system isn't the correct way to fix it (Democrats' method), nor is cutting the money by defunding any better (Republicans' method).

The lower levels of government bureaucracy are messy clumps of power-tripping individuals and an overgrown maze of almost contradictory laws. This can't be fixed at the thousand-mile-high view from congress, in my opinion. We need to assign temporary CEO-like power to intelligent individuals to dive deep into the lower levels and, looking at things from the ground-view, fix our government piece by piece.

I disagree with the Republicans in a dozen different areas (including major party issues), and I agree with the Democrats on several areas. I attempt to critically examine both sides and come to my own conclusions, based on what I believe to be morally correct.

I half wanted to vote for Obama because he looked nice and talked well, and was "cooler" and emotionally encouraging. However, emotional appeal is not what I use to base my decisions off of.

Every time I see what candidates the Republicans put up, I groan (the Republicans' 2008 candidate, McCain, looked like he was about to fall over dead from liver failure). When I hear them speak, I wince at the stupid things they say. Never the less, they (almost accidentally) support what I believe is important, so I'm always stuck in the choice of, do I vote for my legs broken, or my back broken? It's not an easy decision, nor is it one I lightly make. I consider both sides, and am caught in the bind, but ultimately must vote what I feel is right, even if it damages the country in other ways, and even if we have a weaker (or trigger-happier) leader.

Ultimately, I think the primary flaw of the vast majority of our leaders is their pride and ego. You see this in George W. Bush, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Russia's Putin, ofcourse Trump, and I'm sure others as well. It's my opinion that Bush's pride was responsible for the Iraq war (his dad pushed Hussien back to Iraq, and had the wisdom to stop there, but I think Bush Jr was trying to, out of pride, do what his father "failed" to do). I think Putin's pride is responsible for the Ukraine war, one to distract his people from their economic downturn, and two because it seems like (more armchair opinions) he genuinely believes Russians are superior, and that many Russians want to believe they are superior ("All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" ).

And if you think "politicians catering to mindless drones" only means republicans, and your favorite party is different, then congratulations, you win the "mindless drone" label yourself. wink.png As penance, reread the critical thinking article.

Sounds like you think both sides are equally bad.

No, I think both parties are bad. Equally bad? No, the democrats usually have more intelligent arguments and less pleas to emotion (but far from no pleas to emotion). Nevertheless, issues that matter to me the republicans support purely to get the religious vote.

I went through that phase too, but it really requires a lot of mental gymnastics to justify Republican stances.

I don't have to justify them - that's my point. I am free to disagree with the Republicans, and I do in many areas. By thinking of one party over the other as "my" party, Americans (and politicians) are forced to accept the good and the bad, and then have to rationalize the bad of their own party ("well, at least it's not as bad as the other party"). If politicians were less aligned by party, I don't think we'd have near the gridlock in Washington that we do.

They are wrong on abortion, gay rights, minimum wage, social programs to help the poor, tax rates, immigration, voting rights, campaign funding, education, unions, health care... the list keeps going.

In your opinion they are wrong on all those things.
In my opinion, I agree that they are wrong on some of those things.

The runaway campaign funding I don't like (and I especially hate the plea-to-emotions manipulative robbery of the elderly by politicians - my grandma gets some of those, and man do I cringe when bringing her her mail), and I don't like how much corporations influence the elections, but I also dislike how Obama was bashing Republicans for their campaign fundraising by targeting corporations and the wealthy and then literally the next day was doing the exact same thing. That's just hypocrisy.

Personally, I think the Democrats were mostly bashing the corporate funding the Republicans were getting, because it was the Republicans getting it. Obama and Romney both reached $1 billion, and Obama also used Super PACs, he was just slower to embrace it. Hillary Clinton isn't shy of doing so, though Sanders (Democrat), and a few Republicans (including, ugh, Trump), also are shying away from huge corporate sponsors.

I don't like Obama repeatedly and knowingly lying to the public on the health care laws, and intentionally delaying controversial parts of the law until after the elections. I know Republicans have bashed him quite a bit about this, and I hate to parrot it, but when he said "If you like your current plan, you can keep it" (a statement he repeated multiple times in different locations), he was knowingly lying, because he already knew at that point that a huge number of people would have their old plans canceled and be forced to get new ones.

Further, when he promised "no new taxes" to get elected, and then taxed insurance providers with the intention that they'd pass on that tax to citizens, that was technically not a lie but still a greatly deceptive. Further, Obama lied when he said it wouldn't increase medical costs, but they knew ahead of time it would. Three serious knowing lies, intended to deceive the public. Three lies that have been proven as lies.

The Obama administration intentionally lied about those things, and when videos surfaced showing one of the lead Obamacare advisors and architects talking about how this deception was intended, the Obama administration lied by saying he wasn't a part of Obamacare, except they paid him $400,000 for consulting on it, and emails between them prove he was highly placed on it ("integral"), in addition to it being his original design they took and modified.

Health insurance for the poor? Great idea. If part of my taxes go to that, that makes sense to me - caring for the poor is important. Forcing me to buy health insurance for myself? I don't like that. Intentionally lying to trick voters to support your plan? Not cool.

Further, I'd like alot more effort be put into reducing medical costs so medical care is more affordable in the first place. Then, we can talk about making health insurance more affordable. But focusing on health insurance as a means to pay for runaway health costs doesn't actually address the root issue: the runaway costs themselves. And when the Obamacare system actually increases medical costs and insurance costs, it adds to the problem, and makes us more dependent on the government micro-managing our lives for us, making things easier for the average person to get carried along with the stream of work -> eat -> sleep, but making it harder for intelligent individuals to do their own financial balancing to save money to climb higher financially.

I am strongly against the runaway copyright and patent laws, which corporations lobby in favor of, and which Republicans usually side with, and which Obama is also siding with (Trans-Pacific Partnership).

I don't like Obama's personal biases standing in his way of working with Israel. Yes, the current Prime Minister is a jerk, but Obama has intentionally slighted him (and by extension, Israel) again and again, and repeatedly held him to a different standard than he holds others to. It's like Obama doesn't understand they are surrounded with people who want to kill them, and openly say so. It frequently appears that Obama doesn't actually understand middle-east dynamics, and thinks of himself as some great leader of peace, while all our allies in the middle east (Saudi Arabia, Jordon, Israel, and Eygpt) go, "What the crap? He just gave the leading funder of terrorism access to $55 billion dollars of their frozen assets in exchange for the promise of delaying their nukes by 10 years? And they get to inspect their own facilities?"

I don't like how Obama thinks talking about peace is the same thing as supporting peace. I don't like how he assumes everyone thinks the same way he does, and repeatedly gets outmaneuvered by the Russians, and Iran, and Syria, because it's easy for them to see what lines Obama is not willing to cross, and call Obama on his bluffs.

I don't like the Republican discrimination against minorities - especially Mexicans and blacks. I also don't like our government-supported smiling and winking at illegal immigrants when they are brought to this country by corporations for cheap labor, and then faux "busts" and kicking groups of immigrants back to Mexico every now and then to pretend they are doing something, while the corporations who are literally busing them over the border, aren't punished at all. If we are fine with someone working in our country, we should be fine with that person living in our country.

I don't like mandatory support of the unions, especially since from personal family history I know some of the Californian unions were literally corrupt (at least in the 1970s) (my mom (via a relative who was a union leader) personally got to attend several secret backdoor meetings between the unions and high level company executives. Things like what dates strikes should occur, for how long, and what demands would eventually be met, who would be allowed to be fired, who was protected from being fired, and so on, were discussed and negotiated with the corporate executives over dinner before the workers even knew a strike was going to occur - the strikes themselves were orchestrated affairs with the workers unaware of it).

I agree back in the day they were important organizations to counterbalance the power of corporations, and I agree that need hasn't disappeared (corporations obviously still can exploit workers). I disagree that forcing employees to join the union is a good idea - it just gives union an unearned continual stream of revenue, with them having to only do superficial showing to keep the workers happy. Back in the day, being in a union meant something - it meant you were sacrificing the well-being of yourself and your family to stand up for justice. Now it's mostly a joke, as the corporations are in bed with the unions. You can't work without joining a union and paying them part of your wages? I don't think that's the correct way to go about it.

Power needs to be balanced and distributed - if it's too much to the unions, that's not good. If it's too much to the corporations, that's not good. If it's too much to the government, that's not good. Ultimately, everything is supposed to serve the people. If it's more of a burden to the people than a benefit, power needs to be overbalanced.

Now let's take front-runner Hillary Clinton.
A) I don't want another Clinton. Bill Clinton was immoral, and I don't want an immoral leader. Not just the Lewinsky scandal, but multiple other occurrences (It's great he had a budget surplus though!). To quote wikipedia quoting ABC news: "You can't trust him, he's got weak morals and ethics - and he's done a heck of a good job." Can't we ever have both? Strong morals and great leadership (and willing to work with both sides)? *sigh*)
B) The email server isn't a big deal, but she repeatedly lied about it, and the lies are a big deal.
C) Benghazi isn't a big deal, and she hasn't lied about it, and I wish the Republicans would've just shut up about that days after it occurred. That was a bureaucratic failing, not a Hillary Clinton failing.
D) She personally has done pleas-of-emotions to rile up and anger her support base against the Republicans, knowingly making nonfactual statements. I wish I could find the particular quote from her that I remember reading.
E) It's now coming out that (potentially) a jerk in private, though smiling and friendly in public. Not sure how accurate that is.

Can't we have someone real, honest, and what-you-see-is-what-you-actually-get? And no, absolutely no, I don't mean Trump. Trump does appear to be what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and he's real and (so far seems) honest, but the "what we see" in Trump does not look good.

I think his appeal is purely that people are tired of the two-faced politicians, and Trump isn't two-faced (or at least doesn't appear to be), but that appears to be his lone strong point.

Their economic policies have been tried for the last 40 years and have lead to the huge income gap we have today.

I dislike that income gap. I dislike the exploitation of the poor. I'm in favor of some new taxes, at the same time, I don't like our runaway debt. I think our priority should be a mix of new taxes and spending cuts and streamlining our government bureaucracies, with a focus on reducing our debt.

I'd love more government legislation in some industries, less in others. More enforcement against mega corporations, less against small-business owners.

I think big government is bad, I think big corporations are bad, and I think big unions are bad.

I want government to be first at the local level, with state level supporting the local levels, and federal supporting the state levels. Instead of state resting on the back of local, and federal resting on the back of the states. Federal needs to exist to serve, protect, and help coordinate the states, and the states need to exist to serve, protect, and help coordinate the local government. Instead we have a vampiric system of feeding off of the lower levels to sustain the bloated bureaucracies of the higher levels.

If you think a little compromise would solve all our problems, then you should definitely be blaming Republicans.

And I do blame the Republicans for the government shutdown fiascoes, which are almost entirely the Republicans' fault.

I strongly dislike laws getting past that hide other entirely unrelated laws in them. Both parties do that.

Part of the assumption here though is that all compromise is good. That's not true. In many cases, compromise is good, in other places, standing your ground on your morals is important. There are many cases where compromise is fine, other cases where the middle ground is actually better than either extreme, and some cases where the middle ground is worse than either extreme.

I wish the Republicans and Democrats wouldn't make so many "deals", and would debate each issue separately instead of in bundles.
At the very least, we'd see Congressman Bob specifically and intentionally voted for X, instead of the much murkier, Congressman Bob voted for X that was hidden in a package of A, B, C, and D.

The armchair impression I got from Obama, shortly after he entered office, is him saying "I'm willing to compromise, as long as it's you compromising to meet my demands.", verses the Republicans saying, "We won't compromise unless you meet our demands."
It amounts to the same thing, but one sounds much better than the other.

After all, Republicans have God behind them so they can't be wrong and cannot compromise.

It appears to me, again from my armchair, that the majority of the Republican congressmen pay mere lip-service to God to win the conservative vote. The only reason why they still have the conservative vote, is because they do give us what we want in key areas of morals. It's like they are trading us a few moral bones, so we get them in office, then they can give the corporations what the corporations want, so the Republicans can continue receiving campaign donations from them.

I love that the Democrats stand with the poor and with minority groups. That's fantastic! I greatly approve of that.
If they stood for life, that'd tip the scale in their favor for me personally.
The reason why I approve of Democrat's support of minorities, the reason why I dislike slavery (including all the modern day slavery that takes place around the world, and even in the USA), the reason why I am also against abortion, is consistent: I believe life itself is sacred and worth preserving at all costs, even if it costs us convenience, profits, or comfort. Dressing up abortion as "women's rights" is a plea to leap to the defense of women. Women can do whatever they want with their body. When they are carrying a second life in them, that's a second life that deserves its own rights. Bringing up child-rape-related abortions is a plea to emotions - "rape is bad, child-rape is bad, surely abortion is justified in that situation?", it's a plea to emotions to use child-rape (or just rape on its own) as a distraction, as if to say being anti-abortion is pro-rape. The only situation I would support abortion is when a pregnant mother (of whatever age) is in a serious condition, and the doctors are forced into making a decision of who shall live. If they can save both lives, that should be their goal at all costs.

The fact that we allow abortions after a baby already has a heart beat, already has brain activity, and already reacts to pain as a stimuli, that's not morally acceptable (whether or not they can "feel pain" at that point is debated).

If Democrats also supported Israel more as a party (some Democrats do, others less so), that'd also be a huge step forward. I understand this doesn't make sense to non-Christians (I could go into the Biblical view, but it'd take me multiple paragraphs to explain it. Hint: it's not that they are morally superior, and calling them the 'chosen people' doesn't give any information (what are they chosen for?), especially when you understand that they hate being the chosen people). It's not in our direct economic interest to support them, but I believe economics take a back seat to morals. Israel as a nation aren't always morally superior, but the amount of lopsided anger against Israel is staggeringly stupid if you actually look into it in an unbiased way.

The other issues I care about take a back seat, because they affect me personally and are more self-interested:
- Reduction of government debt (through increased taxes (mostly on corporations) and spending cuts)
- Reduction of bureaucracy
- Inverted pyramid structure (higher levels of government supporting lower levels, instead of lower levels supporting higher levels)
- Increased enforcement of regulations on large corporations
- Increased support and reduced regulations on smaller companies
- Less imports and more production here within our own borders. This raises costs of goods for us individuals, unfortunately, but ultimately I think would stabilize our economy and make us less vulnerable to future foreign non-military aggression.

Just take a look at the Republican Senate which is the most obstructionist we have ever seen. They clearly are not a party interested in any sort of compromise. They have blocked almost every single Obama appointee. At one point there was a backlog of over 100 appointees waiting for confirmation causing a vacancy crisis in federal courts. Republicans have filibustered more of Obama's nominees than all other presidents combined. Please stop pretending like both sides are equally bad.

You're holding the entire Republican party responsible for what a sub-section of the party is doing. The Tea Party is intentionally being obstructionist and causing the shutdowns, against the desires of the larger party (who realize the Tea Party is shooting the entire Republican party in the foot with voters because of these issues). The Tea Party has seized 60% of the Republican seats in congress; so yes, it's a sizable chunk - even a majority. But not all Republican congressmen align with that, and these Tea Party republicans were partly elected by Democrat-leaning voters.

This is why if we had more parties, I think we'd reach more consensus on issues. Many Democrats congressmen have been speaking out against the Iran nuclear deal, and are being practically labelled as traitors for doing what they think is right. Republicans and Democrats are being held hostage of independently deciding what they believe is right, based on their own party mandating their views for them. Sure, they have some wiggle room, but go too far out of line with either party's prescribed stance, and your own party turns on you.

I didn't take offense at your view, I took offense at your straw man and (semi-) mockery.

I admit, I let these things bother me more than I should and tend to lash out at people. I see people like conquestor3 who completely ignore data or throw out things like "correlation doesn't equal causation" every time there is information presented contrary to their world view. I am okay with ignorance (to a degree), but quickly get fed up with willful ignorance.

Excellent. Good information to know. Thank you for posting it. That's a thousand times more helpful to an actual dialogue than "That's patently ridiculous, like arguing that you can still die in a car crash, therefore seat belts are pointless."

Just quick FYI, I never said that.

I definitely think if a gun is used in a crime, its serial number should immediately be tracable to who bought it, and that selling a gun to another person should require you to file paperwork with the government, in the same way you have to do so when you sell a car.

I completely agree. It will never happen however. That's one of the things that the anti-gun control crowd will never compromise on because of their fear that the government is going to come take away their guns. The only way that their guns are safe is if the government doesn't know they have them. You could come up with a dozen rational gun control ideas and they would shoot every one down. See my previous post, this is not a group who compromises. They believe their right to guns is sacrosanct regardless of the harm to the rest of society.

I personally don't think that; though I do think many people exploit government support, and that many others who need help don't receive it. I'd like to see bureaucracy reduced (it's easier to exploit bureaucracy if you know how to game the system, and it's also easy to be ignored by bureaucracy if you don't know how to navigate through it), and more power given to real individuals to make actual decisions, and held accountable for their decisions. This would be hard to do, and I don't know how it should be gone about, but I think throwing more money at a partially-working system isn't the correct way to fix it (Democrats' method), nor is cutting the money by defunding any better (Republicans' method).

97% of food stamp benefits reach eligible Americans in appropriate amounts.

I'm okay with putting more of my tax dollars towards a program which has a 3% abuse rate (assuming all 3% is abuse) and which nearly half the recipients are children.

If politicians were less aligned by party, I don't think we'd have near the gridlock in Washington that we do.

This is an inevitable consequence of First Past the Post Voting and will never change unless we can somehow change how elections and voting works here.

The runaway campaign funding I don't like (and I especially hate the plea-to-emotions manipulative robbery of the elderly by politicians - my grandma gets some of those, and man do I cringe when bringing her her mail), and I don't like how much corporations influence the elections, but I also dislike how Obama was bashing Republicans for their campaign fundraising by targeting corporations and the wealthy and then literally the next day was doing the exact same thing. That's just hypocrisy.

Of course it is. It's just one of many way the Obama presidency has been disappointing. Many would argue that he didn't have a choice because money is what wins elections, but you know that all of those large donations come with strings.

Health insurance for the poor? Great idea. If part of my taxes go to that, that makes sense to me - caring for the poor is important. Forcing me to buy health insurance for myself? I don't like that. Intentionally lying to trick voters to support your plan? Not cool.

What's the alternative? Single payer is all but impossible for us because of the Republican's irrational fear of "socialism". The status quo before Obamacare was unacceptable, and there are appreciable differences in health outcomes for the poor under ACA.

Changes in Self-reported Insurance Coverage, Access to Care, and Health Under the Affordable Care Act

The ACA’s first 2 open enrollment periods were associated with significantly improved trends in self-reported coverage, access to primary care and medications, affordability, and health. Low-income adults in states that expanded Medicaid reported significant gains in insurance coverage and access compared with adults in states that did not expand Medicaid.

It's not perfect. Far from it, but it's better than the situation we had before.

And when the Obamacare system actually increases medical costs and insurance costs, it adds to the problem, and makes us more dependent on the government micro-managing our lives for us, making things easier for the average person to get carried along with the stream of work -> eat -> sleep, but making it harder for intelligent individuals to do their own financial balancing to save money to climb higher financially.

Again, health and access outcomes are improved for the poor. They are less likely to be financially ruined by a health issue. That alone should contribute to their economic wellbeing.



Overall, people seem to be pretty satisfied with what they are getting now.

I am strongly against the runaway copyright and patent laws, which corporations lobby in favor of, and which Republicans usually side with, and which Obama is also siding with (Trans-Pacific Partnership).

No arguments there. When Republicans and Obama can agree on something, you know it's bad news.

It frequently appears that Obama doesn't actually understand middle-east dynamics, and thinks of himself as some great leader of peace, while all our allies in the middle east (Saudi Arabia, Jordon, Israel, and Eygpt) go, "What the crap? He just gave the leading funder of terrorism access to $55 billion dollars of their frozen assets in exchange for the promise of delaying their nukes by 10 years? And they get to inspect their own facilities?"

No, Iran is not allowed to inspect itself

Again. What's the alternative? This was a large multi-national agreement. If the US just backs out at the end, do you think Russia and China will as well? No. They want their oil as well. Besides, the sanctions on Iran largely hurt the wrong people. Their poverty rate nearly doubled, and I guarantee you their Ayatollah wasn't missing any meals. All it's doing is ensuring that the next generation of Iranians also support terrorism.

If we are fine with someone working in our country, we should be fine with that person living in our country.

Agreed. Especially when you consider: The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments

Over the past two decades, most efforts to estimate the fiscal impact of immigration in the United States have concluded that, in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use.

I agree back in the day they were important organizations to counterbalance the power of corporations, and I agree that need hasn't disappeared (corporations obviously still can exploit workers). I disagree that forcing employees to join the union is a good idea - it just gives union an unearned continual stream of revenue, with them having to only do superficial showing to keep the workers happy. Back in the day, being in a union meant something - it meant you were sacrificing the well-being of yourself and your family to stand up for justice. Now it's mostly a joke, as the corporations are in bed with the unions. You can't work without joining a union and paying them part of your wages? I don't think that's the correct way to go about it.

You don't throw out all organizations just because some of them are corrupt. Unions today are largely a joke because they have been destroyed by Republicans. As a result, our wages have stagnated and income inequality is higher than it has been since the great depression. We are the only advanced economy without mandatory paid vacation time. We are the only industrialized nation without guaranteed paid maternity leave.

Also, you cannot be forced to join a union. The myth of compulsory union membership. The most they can do is force you to pay partial union dues which are only allowed to actually cover the provable cost of collective bargaining agreements.

I agree back in the day they were important Can't we have someone real, honest, and what-you-see-is-what-you-actually-get? And no, absolutely no, I don't mean Trump. Trump does appear to be what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and he's real and (so far seems) honest, but the "what we see" in Trump does not look good.

His name is Bernie Sanders and he has been by far the most consistent and open candidate I've ever seen.

The armchair impression I got from Obama, shortly after he entered office, is him saying "I'm willing to compromise, as long as it's you compromising to meet my demands.", verses the Republicans saying, "We won't compromise unless you meet our demands."
It amounts to the same thing, but one sounds much better than the other.

It's worth pointing out that Republicans set out from the beginning of the Obama presidency to make sure he was unable to accomplish anything. They had no plans to compromise on anything.

The fact that we allow abortions after a baby already has a heart beat, already has brain activity, and already reacts to pain as a stimuli, that's not morally acceptable (whether or not they can "feel pain" at that point is debated).

I appreciate that your pro-life views don't appear to be "pro-life". Meaning, your care for the fetus seems to actually extend beyond birth. However, that's still your belief, which is far from universal. I believe if you seriously want to reduce the number of abortions in this country, you are better off voting Democrat. After all, it's only the GOP who would choose not to fund a program which is shown to reduce teen pregnancy by 40%, abortion by 35% and save $7 in medicaid costs for every $1 spent on the program. Overall, progressive social and economic policies would have a far greater impact on reducing the number of abortions than defunding Planned Parenthood would.

If Democrats also supported Israel more as a party (some Democrats do, others less so), that'd also be a huge step forward. I understand this doesn't make sense to non-Christians (I could go into the Biblical view, but it'd take me multiple paragraphs to explain it. Hint: it's not that they are morally superior, and calling them the 'chosen people' doesn't give any information (what are they chosen for?), especially when you understand that they hate being the chosen people). It's not in our direct economic interest to support them, but I believe economics take a back seat to morals. Israel as a nation aren't always morally superior, but the amount of lopsided anger against Israel is staggeringly stupid if you actually look into it in an unbiased way.

Israel deserves a lot of the ire they receive. How exactly are Palestinians supposed to react when the international community decides to take over half their land and turn it into Israel? When they didn't agree to it and the first Arab - Israeli war broke out which culminated in Israel taking 60% more of the land which was originally supposed to be for Arabs and expelling 700,000 of them from their home. I suppose all that's okay because it's some prerequisite for Jesus to come take you to heaven. I will never approve of the unconditional support some Christians seem to give Israel.

You're holding the entire Republican party responsible for what a sub-section of the party is doing. The Tea Party is intentionally being obstructionist and causing the shutdowns, against the desires of the larger party (who realize the Tea Party is shooting the entire Republican party in the foot with voters because of these issues). The Tea Party has seized 60% of the Republican seats in congress; so yes, it's a sizable chunk - even a majority. But not all Republican congressmen align with that, and these Tea Party republicans were partly elected by Democrat-leaning voters.

Take a look at all the other votes before this. The Tea Party took over and is forcing the Republican party even further to the right. Boehner had to resign because he's not conservative enough. John McCain isn't conservative enough. The Republican party is in a race to the bottom right now. But hey... at least they pretend to value fetuses.

If the hypothetical future US government needs to be removed, [...] home-defense guns are useless (paraphrased)

Well...

History seems to disagree.

Well, its not like killing one person, and might that be the president, dictator, general-admiral, king or emperor, will change a REGIME just like that.

Killing the head of germany in WW2 wouldn't had much effect before the whole "war effort" went downhill so badly that sane persons couldn't hope to win this anymore. So before removing this one person had any effect, all the sheeps and "I-just-followed-orders" people had to be convinced that giving up was the only option.

Killing Saddam didn't solve the Iraqui Problem. Saddam was just the face of an age old, still ongoing Shiite-sunnite conflict. Now the sides might have changed, the oppression of the other religious/ethnical group stays the same.

How many people would be involved in a "government gone bad"? How many people would you have to remove before the government would change their agenda for the better? How would you prevent worse scum from raising to power (see the french revolution)?

And, honest question here because I am not so well versed in american history from the 19th century, what exactly did killing that one president change? I know he was kinda progressive for its time and all, but besides some bills not being pushed through with presidental power for some more years, and someone else becoming president, did that one murder really change much in the long run?

It's still possible to assassinate politicians.

Yes, and the net effect is likely zero like it always was. Its is hardly ever a single person responsible for all that is wrong in a country or the world. That is some Hollywood black-and-white BS.

It also seemed the one guiding geopolitical strategy of the last US government (lets remove that Saddam, then iraq will become a western democraty just like that), and the current US government (lets kill all the Al Queda and ISIS leaders with drones, that will shut them down)...

Time has proven them wrong again and again. Its like cutting down weed and hoping it wouldn't grow back if you do not touch the root of it.

Or like the ???-five-step-plan dumbed down to three steps:

1. Kill the dictator

2. ???

3. Profit

Well, its not like killing one person, and might that be the president, dictator, general-admiral, king or emperor, will change a REGIME just like that.

In that particular case, the simultaneous killing of at least 3 people (or was it 4?) was planned. That would surely have caused quite a bit of distress. But the other assassins (Powell and some guy starting with A....?) backed out of their "duty".

what exactly did killing that one president change

Nothing at all, I would guess. It's debatable what the "reasoning" may have been anyway. Did Booth really expect that the confederates magically rise from the ashes? Did he think that the blacks wouldn't be enfranchised because every politician would be too afraid of being shot in vengeance? Who cares what a racist nutter reasons about, or why he kills people.

But what's more important is that even a ridiculously weak (original Derringer) pistol is demonstrably sufficient to kill someone. Modern "home use" hand guns are 5-10 times more powerful (depending on what caliber you use), and more accurate as well. The only difference between shooting you or me, and shooting a member of the government is that nobody really cares if you are shot (or if I am). If you shoot a member of the government, it's unlikely that you will get away without being gunned down by security personnel. But if you are not so much worried about your own life, you can most definitively always get sufficiently close and shoot someone -- what could they do to prevent that?

Insofar, I don't think that civil-owned guns are alltogether "irrelevant" because the military has so much better weapons, as had been alleged. They sure are something that people who have a reasonably high risk of being shot at want to consider (but of course, criminals or terrorists will have guns anyway, legal or not... so banning them doesn't really change that much).

Holy crap, what were they rioting over in that video?

In one case, some guy tore a page from the Qaran, in another case it was about a toilet key, and in a couple of other cases, it was about a place in the queue at lunch, and about women. The young man being interviewed in the middle is the toilet key guy (allegedly he didn't have that key at all). The somewhat elderly angry hate preacher says that we owe them, and we broke our promises, and that Merkel is just as bad as Assad (wonder why he is here, then). The guy painting the sign is writing down "their demands", whatever they may be, I'm unable to read the sign. I didn't quite follow in detail what was behind Monday night's riot, but I understand it had to do with a Iraqi kissing a woman, or something.

It doesn't matter much what the trigger for a particular incident was, however. The underlying problem is that these people are ready for violence and do not have any respect for others (including those who really are fugitives) or for the law, and especially the people who should serve them as role models don't have that respect.

There was a stunning discussion on TV last night, among others with Julia Klöckner (chair woman of RP's parliament). She told that she was going to visit a shelter, and knowing that there was an Imam, she'd pay him a visit too, you know... courtesy and such. So the answer she got from him was "Yeah you can come, but do not expect me to shake hands with you, since you are only a woman". Really, dude... in this country women have the same fucking rights as men, and if you can't get that into your misogynist, racist, hatred-driven head, then get the fuck out of my country. You can't come here and demand "your rights", and at the same time shit on everybody else's rights. Because that's shitting on the constitution that grants you the very rights that you demand.

Well I stop reading posts, but I saw ppl mentioning suicide..like, really? What the fuck suicide have to do with this? I dont give the slightest shit about someone that kills himself, except that he should have done sooner, less resources wasted on him.

Suicide is that one case where everyone agrees that mental health is the actual issue (you know, bla bla bla depression is a real thing bla bla bla). This is either the person or his peers fault. Basically what ppl are suggesting here is "lets lower our standards, theres sick ppl who make shit stuff, without a gun he might fail to make shit...to himself".

Give me a break, what kind of argument is that.

97% of food stamp benefits reach eligible Americans in appropriate amounts.

I'm okay with putting more of my tax dollars towards a program which has a 3% abuse rate (assuming all 3% is abuse) and which nearly half the recipients are children.

There's one very effective policy. I'm a little concerned when I see EBT cards used to buy Doritos, soda, and Hostess cakes, while whatever cash people have is used on cigarettes, beer and lotto tickets - I'm sure that's not the 95% case, but it happens, and it sticks out in people's memory over the 100 times they have seen someone buy eggs and milk and bread with an EBT card.

The problem I have with many welfare programs as I have seen them implemented is that it is such a tangled web of different programs - you've got housing assistance, food stamps, TANF, unemployment, fuel assistance, programs for reduced cost cell-phones, free-and-reduced school lunch, various health-care programs - which all have their own paperwork, their own bureaucracy, hell, there are even people whose job is to assist people in tracing out the maximum collection of welfare programs that they can be eligible for. These programs also create some weird, perverse incentives, because there are so many income/benefit cliffs built into them. It can be a rational decision to work a part-time job at a low wage, rather than take a full-time job with better wages, if the additional wages knock you out of the bracket for services that are worth more than the post-tax wage income increase.

I think we'd be better off just giving disadvantaged people whatever sum these programs on aggregate work out to cost, and slash the bureaucracy. It would also eliminate some of the tools that politicians or special interests can use for social and moral engineering, which you may or may not think is a good idea. Personally, while I may not approve of what other people decide to do in their own lives, I don't feel it is my place to tell them they can't do it, if it is not materially impacting me and mine.

Israel deserves a lot of the ire they receive. How exactly are Palestinians supposed to react when the international community decides to take over half their land and turn it into Israel? When they didn't agree to it and the first Arab - Israeli war broke out which culminated in Israel taking 60% more of the land which was originally supposed to be for Arabs and expelling 700,000 of them from their home. I suppose all that's okay because it's some prerequisite for Jesus to come take you to heaven. I will never approve of the unconditional support some Christians seem to give Israel.

I don't think you have to be Christian to support Israel. Historically aware, maybe. You have a country largely settled by survivors and descendants of survivors of genocide (or who came out of pre and post-WW2 Poland/Ukraine/Russia, where it was not exactly a rosy place to be a Jew). In WW2, you have a number of Palestinian and Arab leaders leaning towards supporting Hitler - and whereas many Israeli Jews wanted to fight alongside the British, few Palestinians did so. The British royally botched the transition plan for 47-48, as they did with many of their colonial possessions, essentially washing their hands of the affair and walking away. The surrounding Arab countries bankrolled mercenaries and adventurers to fight a proxy-war against the Israeli Jews, including blockading them and putting kibbutzes and Jerusalem under siege. So, under threat of starvation and extermination(Seriously, when your enemies deny that they will ever accept the existence of you country, no matter the boundaries..., and you have first-hand experience with another enemy that refused to countenance your existence), the Haganah went on the offensive, captured a series of defensible positions, and broke the back of the mercenary forces raised by the Arab states.

The state of Israel was recognized by the UN, and a partition plan proposed. Looking at this plan on the map, it seems like a recipe for disaster, as it would have divided both the Arab and Israeli portions of the Palestinian Mandate into three nearly discontinuous chunks - nevertheless, the Israeli leadership accepted the plan. The Arab League chose not to accept the partition, and invaded Israel instead. Lest we think this a brave move in support of Palestinian independence, consider that Egypt wanted to annex Gaza, the king of Transjordan wanted to annex whatever territory he could, and the Syrians were after their own piece as well, and none of them really cooperated with each other. The IDF defeated the invading Arab forces, and the border ended up getting drawn more or less where the front-lines happened to lie.

Israel is not a saintly country, but it is objectively a more modern, more liberal, more stable state than it's neighbors. I can understand the bunker mentality among their leadership, when the majority of them were survivors of the ghettos, the gulags, concentration camps, and the existential wars of the early history of the Jewish state, and looking at the avowed political aims and propaganda of their opponents. They could do better, but compared to the assholes that are smashing ancient artifacts, importing slave labor to build soccer stadiums in the desert, taking prisoners and beheading them on youtube, or calling everyone infidels, I'll take Israel. I think that if Canadian terrorists were shooting off mortars or firing rockets into Seattle or Buffalo, (well, maybe not Buffalo), the United States would react in exactly the same way that the Israelis do.

We're veering off topic, but I've spent half an hour writing this, so I'm going to post it anyway :-)

And, honest question here because I am not so well versed in american history from the 19th century, what exactly did killing that one president change? I know he was kinda progressive for its time and all, but besides some bills not being pushed through with presidental power for some more years, and someone else becoming president, did that one murder really change much in the long run?

If Lincoln isn't assassinated, then his more moderate, less punitive vision of Reconstruction probably plays out. Compared to Johnson (who was from the South, and was attacked for any perceived softness on Southerners), Lincoln probably has the clout to push back on the Radical Republicans in his Congress (remember, the parties have the same names, but have made some rotations around the political quadrant since then - Republicans at this time were for a more powerful federal government, abolition of slavery, etc.).

It's difficult to foresee where this might have gone, but perhaps with the Radicals held back a little, Reconstruction may have proceeded in a way which does not alienate Southern Whites so severely that they form terrorist organizations like the KKK and immediately upon regaining majorities of their state legislatures institute Jim Crow laws that rolled back nearly all the progress made for black rights.

Damn, where's my portal gun...

Well I stop reading posts, but I saw ppl mentioning suicide..like, really? What the fuck suicide have to do with this? I dont give the slightest shit about someone that kills himself, except that he should have done sooner, less resources wasted on him.

Suicide is that one case where everyone agrees that mental health is the actual issue (you know, bla bla bla depression is a real thing bla bla bla). This is either the person or his peers fault. Basically what ppl are suggesting here is "lets lower our standards, theres sick ppl who make shit stuff, without a gun he might fail to make shit...to himself".

Give me a break, what kind of argument is that.

Two issues:

1. If the suicidal person thinks "Well, since I am going to kill myself anyway, I might as well kill a bunch of people I hate first", then it's everyone's problem.

2. When someone dies, especially via suicide, it causes everyone who cares about that person to suffer in varying degrees. Suffering is contagious - it alters people's everyday behavior and causes ripples of negativity with varying magnitudes to spread throughout all of society. The idea is to minimize suicides even in people that we don't directly care about so that we minimize the overall impact on the rest of society.

I don't think you have to be Christian to support Israel. Historically aware, maybe. You have a country largely settled by survivors and descendants of survivors of genocide (or who came out of pre and post-WW2 Poland/Ukraine/Russia, where it was not exactly a rosy place to be a Jew). In WW2, you have a number of Palestinian and Arab leaders leaning towards supporting Hitler - and whereas many Israeli Jews wanted to fight alongside the British, few Palestinians did so. The British royally botched the transition plan for 47-48, as they did with many of their colonial possessions, essentially washing their hands of the affair and walking away. The surrounding Arab countries bankrolled mercenaries and adventurers to fight a proxy-war against the Israeli Jews, including blockading them and putting kibbutzes and Jerusalem under siege. So, under threat of starvation and extermination(Seriously, when your enemies deny that they will ever accept the existence of you country, no matter the boundaries..., and you have first-hand experience with another enemy that refused to countenance your existence), the Haganah went on the offensive, captured a series of defensible positions, and broke the back of the mercenary forces raised by the Arab states.

The sequence of events really aren't that cut and dried. The land making up Israel and Palestine was primarily Arab (83% Arab, 11% Christian, 5% Jew). They had been living there for hundreds of years. In 1917 the British released a letter stating the intention of creating a home for the Jews in Palestine. This was done for political reasons as a way of keeping the US and Russia involved in WW1. Based on the promise of a permanent home in Palestine, Jews began flooding into the region. This naturally increased tension and conflict between the Jews and Arabs. This is also why you had Palestinian Arabs reaching out to Axis powers and not supporting the British during WW2. Why would they fight for the country who wanted to forcibly take their land and give it to the Jewish immigrants?

In 1947 the UN released the map of their plan to break up the Mandate of Palestine into Jew and Arab controlled sections, with the Jews getting over half of the area. Why the hell would anyone expect the Arabs in to just accept that? This tipped off the Civil War of 1947. This was largely a series of terrorist attacks from both sides. Arabs attacking buses, Jews bombing crowded markets. Nasty stuff. This is also what lead to the blockade of Jerusalem. It wasn't done in a vacuum or without provocation. It wasn't until the British gave up and fled (after being attacked by Jews and Arabs alike), and the Jews made their Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel that other Arab nations invaded.

Since then the condition and treatment of Gaza is downright criminal. You have war refugees literally backed into a corner with no escape and they are fighting back the only way they know how. The US is the only country who opposes holding Israel responsible for their war crimes. As I said before, the continued blind support of Israel is a huge problem.

I think that if Canadian terrorists were shooting off mortars or firing rockets into Seattle or Buffalo, (well, maybe not Buffalo), the United States would react in exactly the same way that the Israelis do.

For the comparison to be apt, we would had to have taken all the land the US currently occupies from Canada and forced them into an area about the size of Delaware and not let them leave. Oh, we would also have to repeatedly bulldoze their houses and farmland. It's these actions which allow groups like Hamas to flourish.

The US is the only country who opposes holding Israel responsible for their war crimes. As I said before, the continued blind support of Israel is a huge problem.

No, the Harper government does, too. YMMV on whether the current government means "Canada" or not, of course. Stephen Harper's opponents are nothing if not vocal.